Take a bow, Adrian Martinez.

Chris Klieman and Collin Klein deserve to take one too. One week after the 2022 season started to look grim, the Wildcats are 1-0 in Big 12 play and for the third time in four tries, and the second consecutive time in Norman, they beat Oklahoma. Early in the week, Klieman said that he, Klein and Martinez had a meeting. That was simplified to three words, “cut it loose.” By the end of Saturday night, it certainly looked like Adrian Martinez listened.

The drastic shift between the Wildcat performance against Tulane and Oklahoma is not only important because they are now 1-0 in conference play, but because Martinez was receptive to the coaching and strategy from Klieman and Klein. Also, the two men that influenced the outcome this week for Martinez know what they are doing.

Nebraska came to Gaylord Family Memorial Stadium last season with Martinez at quarterback and exited as losers in a one-score game, one of many results like that while Martinez played under Scott Frost. For whatever reason, the outcome never changed in Lincoln. Fast forward to Manhattan, and the outcome changed in one week against the top team in the league.

Martinez has fully bought into everything going on inside K-State football. After the game, Martinez spoke to FOX’s Allison Williams and said, “I am really proud to be a Wildcat, I think our culture is special. The stuff we are building here is different and we come and play with an edge every game.”

Then when the Wildcat signal caller came to the mic after the game, he was asked about what was different between the team he played with last year and lost 23-16 and the team that he was with this season and won 41-34. Martinez was respectful like he has been all season, he didn’t want to say anything that might be construed as negative towards his teams in Lincoln.

“It’s hard to speak on the difference between the two teams, but I will speak on what I think makes this team great and that’s our culture. Coach Klieman is an incredible leader and we have a special group. A group that is able to bounce back after a tough loss, one where we didn’t perform the way we wanted to especially offensively and come out here against, I don’t know what they are ranked, doesn’t matter, a really good team and come ready to play and know we can win.”

Martinez went on to say it was the most fun he had playing football in a long time. He was also candid and self-reflective of his play from the week prior, admitting that he “left some heart out on the table last Saturday and it hurt, and I didn’t do my teammate’s justice.”

All surely signs that the approach Klieman took last week in trying to get his super-senior quarterback right paid off. Klieman seemed to challenge Martinez and his play caller, Collin Klein with pointed comments both after the Tulane game and on Tuesday. After the win for the Cats, their head coach looked and sounded as happy as he had maybe ever been at K-State.

“That Martinez kid is a pretty good player. I told him last week that I believed in him, even after the loss, I said ‘I believe in you and everyone in this room believes in you.’ Met again with him on Sunday, told him how much I loved him, how much I believed in him and just go out and have fun and rip it.”

That is what happened, Martinez threw for 234 yards and had conviction in his decisions. A few balls that got tipped or maybe could have ended up in the defense’s hands, but Martinez wasn’t worried about it. Then you have the gutsy 148-yard rushing night with four touchdowns, the same amount Skylar Thompson had against Oklahoma in the 48-41 home win in 2019.

After the game, Deuce Vaughn highlights the belief that the teammates of Martinez had in him, Vaughn also had his back.

“To address the doubters we had going into this game, I feel like a lot of people wrote us off as an offense and Adrian as a quarterback. It was one of those things we knew what he could do and what we could do as an offense.”

When asked about the now iconic bow that Martinez took, Vaughn said it was for “all the doubters, that’s for y’all. That’s one of those things where it felt like he was written off too early.”

We also got a “that’s my quarterback” out of Vaughn, it was absent of the tears and sunglasses that Terrell Owens had for Tony Romo over a decade ago.

The takeaway from last night in Norman should be this: for as dead as the season looked after the Tulane game, this team answered the call in the toughest environment they will face all season and the season looks even more alive than it would have been with a win last week. There are eight games left in the regular season, but it seems that everything clicked for Martinez and the Wildcat offense. This team loves their teammates, they believe in their coaching staff and now both have put forward efforts for those on the outside to believe in them as well.

Which all considered, is very worthy of a bow.

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